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Today I read this article by Paul Krugman. He’s one of the giants in Economics. One of the rock-stars, so to speak. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008.

And, believe it or not, economics still interests me, so when his name popped up on my Facebook Timeline and I saw that he’d written about the whole Amazon/Hachette dispute, I immediately clicked over to read.

My response can be summed up as follows:

“We are not amused.”

Now before I launch into why, I must warn you that this is going to dig into economics a bit, but I’ll be trying my best to keep things jargon-free or at least to explain things so we’re all on the same page. This will be a long post (because I could take all week to write about this but don’t want to), but I do hope at least some of you will bear with me.

First, let me define a few things (although I will be simplifying things so as to hopefully not bore everyone):

Market Efficiency:

A market condition under which all prices reflect all market information. Since I’m not writing an academic article, I’m just going to come out and say that this is the fair market condition. Every supplier knows what their clients want, and how much they’re willing to pay for it. Each client knows what each supplier in the market for a specific product sells, what prices the suppliers are selling at and which product’s price will match his/her specific value for the product.

Today’s product up for discussion: Books.

In an efficient market, prices are determined by supply and demand. Supply and demand are both determined by price and quantity. So for every dollar price increase, suppliers are willing to produce more units of a product. Clients, on the other hand, buy more for every dollar price decrease.

Equilibrium Price:

At a specific price, all books will be sold to everyone who wants that book. There will be no surplus or deficits in books. This price, known as the equilibrium price, is where the most books are sold to the most people.

If you increase the market price, more books are produced, but fewer people are willing to buy them. (Which results in say… paperbacks being pulped. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

If you decrease the price, more people will want the books (come on, don’t tell me you wouldn’t buy five books if a shop declared a half-price sale on everything), but fewer people will be willing to publish, because the profit might not be high enough.

Which brings me to Amazon’s Announcement on what its dispute with Hachette is about:

Price Elasticity:

The increase/decrease in quantities isn’t related to price on a one-to-one basis. Let’s assume that a book costs $2. If a book price could increase with one dollar, a publisher would most probably produce more than one book extra. If a book price decreases by a dollar, readers will probably buy more than one book extra.

Ever walk into a shop to buy one book, only to find that everything is marked down to half price? Will you only walk out with two books? I wouldn’t. I’d probably walk out with as many as I can carry/afford.

This is what Amazon is blaming the dispute on. They (quite correctly, in my opinion) surmise that more people will buy books at a slightly cheaper price, which will result in everyone on the supply side making more money. This basically comes down to the argument that it’s better to sell a thousand items at $1 each, than one item at $100.

“But,” one might say, “if the equilibrium price has been reached, messing with it will result in either the supplier or the client losing.”

Here’s the thing, though: We’ve never reached the equilibrium price in the first place, because the publishing market isn’t efficient. But I’m still getting to that point.

Middlemen:

Because I think you need a bit of a rest from reading, and because this guy explains middlemen and what they do in a market better than I do, I’m going to ask you to watch this.

To link this back to my argument: Middlemen are proof that the real world is, well, real and my nice ideal of an efficient market isn’t all that realistic.

See in the real world, book suppliers don’t have access to their clients. (I.E. Readers) And the clients have no way to actually know all the awesome and amazing books that are out there to read. Middlemen’s jobs are to bring books to the readers and readers to the books. They then charge a price for this service, paid for by either the client, the supplier, or some combination of both.

But this is where I’m going to rock your world. It’s also where my main problem with Krugman’s article comes in.

Krugman sees Amazon as a monopsony (a buyer that buys so many products from a supplier that it can in fact determine the price at which it buys from the supplier, most often to the supplier’s detriment.) This, I think we can all agree to be true, to an extent.

Amazon is a middleman. It connects the publisher to the readers, by creating a place where a huge amount of readers go to buy books. Because so many readers buy through Amazon, Amazon is now in a position to charge more for its service, and Amazon wants to make books cheaper while Hachette doesn’t. Which, from Hachette’s point of view, is to Hachette’s detriment. (An yes, I can admit that they’re not wrong.)

However, Krugman has basically made a big mistake by saying the following: “By putting the squeeze on publishers, Amazon is ultimately hurting authors and readers. “

My problem with this comes down to a fact that everyone seems to forget:

The publisher isn’t the supplier. The author is. The publisher is yet another middleman. A middleman who’s out to increase market efficiency to everyone’s advantage.

…

You hear that sound? Like distant thunder? Yep, that’s the sound of disillusioned authors everywhere laughing.

Why? Let’s look at some market realities, shall we?

Monopsonist:

A buyer that has so much market power that it can influence the market price. This is because it can threaten to stop buying from a given suppler if he/she/it doesn’t lower prices.

Pretty much since the first printing press was invented, people who’ve wanted to be widely read wanted to be published. After all, the more copies of something exists, the more people have a chance to read them. As time went on, publishers started gathering readers as well. People liked reading high-quality books and if a publisher was known for producing those, people kept buying from them.

Which is a dream come true for any writer. Not only does the writer now have a chance to see his works printed in volume, but there are actually people who want to read them.

However, there are many writers, and only a select few publishing houses with access to nice, big readerships. Readerships who would not read something unless it was, let’s say… printed by the writer him/herself.

This resulted in publishing houses being able to cherry pick what they thought would satisfy their readers’ wants/needs. Then, these few publishing houses became fewer. Some picked the wrong cherries. Others melted together into fewer, bigger publishing houses with more market power.

Who lost here?

The author. Industry standard at the moment is 25% royalties. Which means that they are paying 75% of profits from books they wrote for covers, editing, printing and distribution. They actually make less, because there’s a third middleman, the agents, which our big publishers force on writers. (“If you don’t have an agent, we ain’t even looking at your book.”)

The publishing houses offering bigger loyalties don’t have enough market power to actually be of much use to a writer. Yes, it’s getting the book published. But read? Not so much. And besides, these guys aren’t the ones Amazon has a problem with. Because most of them already seem to understand the value of selling books for cheaper. Especially e-books.

Ah. Yes. E-books. See Amazon wants publishers to decrease prices on e-books. Not all books. e-books. Where there is no technical cost to carrying copies. Because there are no copies to carry. No printing costs. No warehousing. No transport. And yet big publishing houses usually charge more for them than physical books, and give writers the industry standard of: 25% royalties.

Yep. The same amount as for print books. But the expenses are less.

Which means that basically, big publishers created market ineffiency in order to benefit themselves.

But wait. There’s more.

Oligopoly:

A market condition where the market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. These sellers have market power to influence buyer activity and price, since it’s easy for a few companies to band together and collude to fix prices.

So big publishing charges 75% of a book’s net price for covers, editing, printing and distribution. Marketing? Weeeeeeeelll…. No. See they put all their money together, and then decide who to spend their marketing budgets on. They choose which books gets displays in stores. They choose which books gets placement at airports and other premium selling spots. They choose which book gets the big mural at underground train stations in London and which ones get advertised in big readership magazines.

In other words: These companies influence which books get seen by their readership. Which means that the readership thinks they’re seeing everything out there to buy, but really, they don’t.

So what this means is that publishing houses actively withhold information from their readers through manipulating which books the reader is aware of, and further adds to this by not charging the equilibrium price. In fact, they’re not even trying.

This results in readers losing, and either buying fewer books or not buying any books, because they don’t see anything that appeals to them. And because they’re less likely to find something where the price matches the reader’s perceived value for the book.

Who loses here? Actually… everyone. Readers lose for the reasons stated above. Writers lose because the potential amount of books sold isn’t realized, which means they’re not making the money they could have. (Even Lee Child and James Patterson.) Amazon loses for the same reason, because they can charge selling costs on fewer sales. And so do the publishing houses.

Why then, would publishing houses continue to act to their own detriment?

A move toward market efficiency and why this is unattractive to Hachette and publishers like it.

First, I want to say that I don’t for a moment think that Amazon is the guardian angel to all writers everywhere. I know that they’re motivated by their need for greater profit, not for some particular goodwill toward writers.

However, Amazon has been leveling the playing field between publishers and writers. They’ve collected a huge amount of readers to themselves. And then basically gave writers free direct access to those readers. This in itself has brought about a huge and long over-due innovation in the publishing industry.

Yes, the traditional industry is still cherry picking, but those who didn’t get picked simply went to Amazon and got published anyway. And Amazon, through their use of algorithms, keywords and search engines made it possible for readers to be more likely to find the book they want to read, even if they never knew it existed. They’re creating ways for authors to at least try to get books before their readers. Something that cannot be underestimated, but that publishers aren’t at all that keen on. You see that bit where Krugman talks about Amazon being able to kill the buzz for a book?

Publishing houses have done this through spending one book’s income on another’s marketing, and then blaming the author of the former for not writing a good enough book and then all but destroying that author’s career. And for good measure, holding onto the book rights forever, just in case the author wanted to sell it elsewhere and actually make money with it.

Before, authors had to sigh and say “oh well.” Now, they don’t. Now, they can buy their own covers. They can find their own editors (who often free-lance with big publishers as well). They can hire their own PR firms. And they can publish both e-copies and paperbacks on their own terms.

Amazon brought in print-on-demand, which means that only the amount of paper books that are wanted at a specific price need be printed.

Which means that publishing houses, once in a position of supreme bargaining power, aren’t actually as necessary to writers to be published and seen.

Which means that more and more people aren’t even interested in being traditionally published any more.

Which in turn means that publishing houses are clinging more to their industry standard royalty rates. They thereby “maximize” (and I use this term loosely) their profits by taking their own profit and most of the value taken from readers and writers, while delivering less and less of the benefit they might have had before. Marketing money? Gone to cover over-heads. Huge advances to help author cash-flows as they write the next one? All but gone, or otherwise part of a punitive system where authors who don’t even get marketed, get dumped and made out to be bad writers if they don’t earn out their advances. Editors? Still there, but I can find quite a lot of them by googling. What’s more, writers can hire more and more of them as publishing houses lay them off to lower overheads.

My point and the elephants in the room.

I’ve been watching what’s going on for a while, and what I’ve seen and experienced have turned me off traditional publishing. However, from what I’ve written above, I want to point out the following:

Elephant #1No matter how many times Paul Krugman and other traditionally published writers might call Amazon wrong, it doesn’t make Big Publishing Right.

Elephant #3The sooner publishing houses realize that writers now have more bargaining power and act accordingly, the sooner everyone wins.

Elephant #4There will be a point where no one will be willing to pay 75% of a net book price for what will basically amount to the old publishing world’s diminishing prestige and validation that no longer means anything to the readers.

Elephant #5No one wants Amazon to be the only connection between writers and readers, but it’s obviously happening.

Elephant #6

Amazon is starting their own publishing imprints. These imprints offer services AND higher royalty rates. If publishing houses want to survive, they should stop blaming Amazon and start competing with them.

Elephant #7

Competition between Amazon and Publishing houses benefit everyone. Amazon will get those lower e-book prices. Writers get more sales. Readers buy books they want for prices they want and those publishing houses who are able to efficiently do their jobs while turning a profit will survive. Unlike the current ones who refuse to budge off their own business models. Those are doomed to fail thanks to the vicious cycle they refuse to get out of.

Elephant #8The sooner writers realize that they should start pushing more to call the shots, the better for all of us. Assuming that big publishing dies. Amazon will be alone to shove us around. Alone, we’ll be easily shoved. Together, on the other hand… Honestly, I’d prefer a perfect market, but given that we could end up with Amazon as a full-blown monopoly, we need to figure out how to balance market power.

Hi all! Just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive. Just a little busy.

Yesterday in particular, thanks to a water leak in my mom’s wardrobe that resulted in her having to wash all her summer’s clothed in hot water, a leak in the washing machine’s piping that led to a flooded kitchen and finally a cold geyser that resulted in a half an hour dish washing task taking five times as long.

Long sentence.

Massively long day during which I did almost nothing productive.

I didn’t even look at my economics.

So anyway. I’m far behind my study schedule, so I’ll have to cut this short.

Monday kind of got lost between research for that other WiP of mine and I promised to write an awesome post on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I hit rock bottom. As in, if I was through dynamite and a shovel, I’d have found myself in China. I don’t know whether it’s due to staffing problems, laziness or just plain insensitivity, but my illustrious Tertiary institution decided to let me know by TEXT MESSAGE that I would not be allowed to continue my studies. No reason. Nothing. Just one hundred and sixty characters’ worth of soul destruction.

By this morning though, I came to an interesting realization. I had hit the bottom of the hole, so there was nothing else to do but salvage and/or move on. The time had finally arrived for me to tough it out. So I drove to my University and asked for an explanation from the admin. See… I could not grasp how I could be kicked out on a single subject. The message made me almost doubt in myself, since I started to think that I could have failed another one or two of the subjects. Funny how quickly that came up.

But then I made a funny decision to a) Trust God in where He was going to make me go and b) refuse to believe that I could have done so badly after I had written so well for the other modules. c) Find a job that would be worth my while. I might not have a degree, but I would not let that ruin my life. By gum! (I should mention that I get very blustery when I tough things out. When I start gritting my teeth, people should run for their basements.)

So I walked into the lady’s office and asked quite nicely for an explanation. (See, for all my bluster, I also know that it’s much easier to get things done by asking nicely.) And here it is. One of my module’s marks have yet to be confirmed. They had turned the entire process of admissions over to a computer program that reads an unconfirmed mark as a 0% performance. That, with the economics was just enough to put me on the so called blacklist.

But basically, I had nothing to worry about until 10 January. But I was much too relieved to be annoyed.

In fact I was almost in tears.

But I stuck to my job decision and started looking. I found a job as a restaurant manager close to my home and applied. The owner called me back a few hours later for an interview! So if everything goes well, I might be employed by the end of December.

I’m thrilled! But I’m still praying about it. If I’m meant to get the job, I will. If not, I know that something better is on the way.

Well, as some of you might know… I’ve been working really hard to get together the guts to tell my mom about my economics.

Yesterday we were driving and spoke about completely other things and studying somehow came up. Before I knew what was happening, I blurted out that my economics were well beyond salvage now. To my surprise, it didn’t turn into our customary fight, but rather we started speaking about why I was struggling to study the work required.

For those of you that were wondering, think four old family Bibles. In essays. With the succession of essays having nothing to do with each other. And most of the essays have a lack of coherence. The authors clearly never learnt that the intro needs to involve the topic, or that the body needs to involve the intro. Or that the conclusion must have something to do with the essay they had written.

Sorry. I really get angry that we are marked strictly on the form and structure of any essays we write, but are then forced to sit through work that is far below that standard, just because the writer of that essay has a M or a PHD tagged to his degree.

I know that they know more than I do, but it does not cancel out the fact that 75% of them need an editor.

Oh. And while I’m this hideously off topic, wouldn’t it be nice if our lecturers actually read what they selected? That way, they would notice that what they give us in a way of information, does not correspond to the lectures…

“Read tomorrow’s essay before class,” they say.And then forget to mention which of the essays happen to be the ones that need to be read. I was not aware that economics students need to attend Paranormal Studies 148: Telepathics.

Phew. Aaaaaanyway… I pretty much went into that rant yesterday, and I assume my mother got what I meant. Well… She commented as follows…

“So you always think that you’re above average. Are you saying no-one passed?”

My reply:

“No, but I estimate that about 80% of the class sat through the course at least twice.” Which is a valid point to make. Our average third year subjects have around 200-250 students enrolled. Economics: 600-800. Hmm…

And that was that. My secret is out. I still have my head…

Kidding. My mother is seriously an awesome woman. Just the fact that she took the news this calmly attests to it. We just don’t always understand each other the way we’d like to. It is the curse of being in a stubborn family. We take a point, form an opinion and stick with it until the time that someone can change our opinions. And that means conflict.

Lots of it.

But there isn’t a woman out there that I love and respect more than her. It’s just that our opinions about the direction of my life tend to differ.

Sigh.

To think that I’ve been ranting about coherence. I think I covered three topics in one composition…

Academia here I come!

;-P

How are you doing? Who finished their NaNo’s? Any stories of telling someone something scary? How did it turn out?

For hours. Needless to say, economics was pretty much out of the question. So, since writing takes up amazingly little of my concentration, I decided to write as much as I can between the bangs and the barks. Later I found two pigeon chicks on our patio. I suspect the contractors scared them and they toppled the nest out. It looks like it will be OK though. My mom and I made a nest with newspaper and a basket, and their mother has been in it, so I assume they’ll be fed. Now the thing will be to keep the cats away from them.

Anyway, back to my writing… I ended up with some interesting things. Callan’s complication didn’t go away. I’m not really going to go into it, but let me just say that his name is Quinlan and he isn’t going anywhere in the near future. *grins evilly*

Interestingly, Ward and James’s friendship has started changing looong before I thought it would. I used to think that the change would come towards the end of the novel, or even the beginning of the second one. (Yes this beast of an epic has between two and four siblings.) Instead… they surprised me yet again.

It’s leaving me a bit bewildered, but after thinking about it for a while, I realised that it improves the story if this change shows early on, rather than just towards the end. On the other hand, it throws a complication of the large story arch, since the change is happening too early for me to put what I saw in the right place.

There’s also the fact that I can see Doorways’s Bigbad working behind the scenes, but I can’t seem to get the bastard to show up to the story. An introduction would be great about now. After all, I’m a quarter of the way through the story.

But… I am actually contemplating the idea that the Bigbad has already been introduced. The introduction was short, but it’s there… Hmm… I actually like the idea, but it would significantly change the story. More pondering needed there.

Oh I almost forgot! I got 3015 words done yesterday! *does happy dance* So I’m at almost seven thousand words for NaNo. I doubt that I’ll get that much done for today though, since I have to catch up on my economics reading. But who knows? I might actually get this book done, after all…

What about you? For those of you who have been NaNo’ing, how is it going? Anything interesting pop up in your writing yet? For those of you that aren’t, what are you keeping yourselves busy with? How is it going?